Some time after settling in Polygondwanaland, the travelers make plans to kill the ruler of the lands and infiltrate the “inner cell.” They meet secretly within the darkness of the night to create a plan, yet little do they know that this plan won’t go well. “Inner Cell” is the first track of Polygondwanaland’s second side and is the first track of a suite of songs sung by Joey referred to as the “Horology” trilogy. As the start of the trilogy, “Inner Cell” serves as an introduction to the darkest elements of Polygondwanaland with its plodding pace and lyrics of rebellion, yet it debuted later than other tracks from the album.
“Inner Cell” was recorded by Casey Hartnett at Flightless HQ with additional parts done by Stu and Joey. These sessions can be found within polygondwanaland the movie where Joey can be found singing the final line of the song and adding a synth part. The song first appeared with the release of Polygondwanaland on November 17th, 2017 with gentle acoustic guitars and airy synths.
While releasing in 2017, it would not be performed until at least 2019-06-26 at Howler in Naarm (Melbourne). At this show was the first known performance of the trilogy, which has remained with them ever since and even made it to the concert film Chunky Shrapnel (recorded on 2019-10-06) and its accompanying soundtrack. On extremely rare occasions “Inner Cell” was taken out and replaced with “Cyboogie.” The suite was in heavy rotation throughout 2019 before vanishing in 2020 and 2021. In a 2020 Reddit AMA Lucas said that the “Horology” trilogy was the hardest song the band had to play live. In another comment he elaborated: “Blocking some parts / instruments out and only listening to some is really hard. There's parts where I have to kind of ignore/tune cavs out which really goes against everything you learn about playing with people.”
On 2022-05-21 at KEMBA Live in Columbus, the trilogy reappeared and has stayed in rotation since, becoming the most frequent Polygondwanaland material outside of “Crumbling Castle” > “The Fourth Colour.” Both Cavs and Lucas have named the trilogy as some of the hardest material to play.